Representing Two Burnouts on TV

This article draws on an analysis of two combined TV reports on the burnout of two individuals, Hervé and Catherine, respectively. It seeks to develop a sociology of media representations of gender differences that, from a semiological standpoint, does not reduce gender categories to the status of signifiers of discourse but, on the contrary, preserves their capacity to serve as a reference framework. To this end, it reconsiders what representing actually means, with gender envisaged as an operator of meaning. This kind of approach, which avoids the pitfalls of the constructivist paradigm, also has the advantage of highlighting multiple procedures of translation performed by this television device. In the present case, it allows for the figuration of a disease whose anatomy is difficult to grasp and objectify via the individual’s life story. Gender categories are thus instantiated by TV reports as a procedure of categorization, narrative and symbolization of people whose life trajectory is recounted, from childhood up to the appearance of the crisis.